thorstenu wrote:

Interesting..  so that makes my experience a spiritual one after all?

In those lucid dreams, did your senses perceive an outside world, or did they project it out?  Compare the waking life to how real that dream world felt in your ability to see, hear, taste, feel, even love external objects and beings.
Are your senses in waking life interpreting an outside environment, or are they projecting it out? What are the consequences?

ruiner wrote:

You don't have to have an all or nothing equation, re: creator/observer/actor/et cetera. Similarly with the levels of awareness and control amidst those positions.

That's what I meant with some sort of "half" lucid dreaming.

ruiner wrote:

As fond as we are of the notion of a lucid dream as a time dilation chamber... as for studying Japanese, the problem is how to verify accuracy in a subjective realm. When one lacks external constants or intersubjectivity as we have in the corporeal world...

As you are connected to the outside world with your eye movement (after all you are in REM), something like a time dilation doesn't seem possible.
As for external constants, perhaps hearing would be possible. Our ears are always active (security reasons) and it is not uncommon to incorporate external sounds into dreams. But I doubt it works for whole Japanese lessons while lucid. Besides hearing, I was able to taste my mouth while lucid (which makes eating delicious things somehow pointless) but it seems difficult to incorporate this into a learning scenario.

@yukamina
You cant compare books or movies to a lucid dream as they provide you a story out of your control.

Last edited by thorstenu (2009 November 13, 6:28 pm)

yukamina wrote:

...and often I'm not in my dreams.

not even in wet dreams?!

Very interesting thread- I want to take a look into this when I have a few hours to really sit down and understand it. Subscribed

Everyone has their own take on things. Dreaming is like life - a transitory experience, and it's value and impact on a person is going to be unique. But we do our selves a disservice to define and limit everything so completely. Each of us will have our own perceptions of reality, dreaming and waking. I disagree with many posts here because they are not true to my own personal experiences in the dream world. My best dream was lucid, and lasted about an hour and a half, and had so many things that were fun and beautiful and creative that were simply incredible. One of the most interesting facets of dreaming, and LD, is the pure creativity that can come into ones realm of experience. I have never felt bored in LD myself, but I have my own views about the value and "realness" of the experience. My view is partly that LD is about learning to increase the quality of ones awareness (as is waking life), and is a damn fun way to do it. But to others it is simply a waste of time. I am not saying they are wrong, as it true for them. As always, to each their own, but I think if a person is interested in the practice, it is very worthy of exploring, and the possibilities exceed the limits mentioned in this threads posts.

No I haven't. I lived in Boulder for awhile though so I have been by there many times. I knew a few people who went there. From the little I know, it looks like an interesting school. I think there is quite a large buddhist community in the Boulder area in general (I'm in Denver now). Recently one of my cousins came here for some kind of buddhism conference that I believe was in part held at Naropa.

How about yourself bodhisamaya? If I remember correctly from long ago read posts, you are a practicing buddhist (in Hawaii?) yes?

Just to add a bit to the dream yoga thing -

In the book I read about it, they describe a practice to cultivate awareness through all moments, sleeping and waking, (with the true goal being residing in the empty pure light of primordial awareness) and I believe there were four or five meditations that they did for the night practice, each occuring after waking throughout the night. Each had a different theme or quality, and different meditation/body positioning. In the last phase of the night they go to the "wrathful realm", which is said to temper the spirit (and is only doable after training in the other stages), which I thought was interesting. I believe it was a Tibetan dzogchen tradition. I really enjoyed the book (I think it was just called "dream yoga"), and did try some of the practices and meditations from it. I found it both fascinating and directly beneficial to my own experiences (dreaming/waking).

I also remember the "a" symbol you use as your avatar as a part of the practice - this symbol is visualized in the throat center on a (pink ?) lotus flower, in the the first meditation of the night practice - to facilitate a journey to the peaceful dream realm. Interestingly I love this symbol, and used it in my day time meditation recommended by the book (I forget the name of the meditation, something that starts with a Z I think). I actually have it sitting on the wall in front of me, placed above my computer LOL.

Last edited by TaylorSan (2009 November 13, 11:51 pm)

Very interesting. I will have to learn more about the different lineages in the future. And yes the practice with wrathful energy was for the advanced (fascinating). I have not had the opportunity to meet the right teacher, but I would very much like to someday. It is interesting the point you mention about death and sleeping - I have long felt the connection, and came to similar personal theories before hearing about correlations between the bardo states described by buddhists. And yes the teachings also described training so as to becoming aware during the phases of death. I have a very limited understanding of this, but it is deeply intriguing, and flows well with my personal observations/beliefs/experiences.

Last edited by TaylorSan (2009 November 14, 12:42 am)

ruiner wrote:

bombpersons wrote:

I just tried it last night. First I tried using the MILD method (by repeating mantra in your head just before you go to sleep) and got to sleep. I then woke up in the middle of the night, but couldn't remember anything of the dream

Then I thought I would try the WILD method, so I lay on my back and and tried to clear my thoughts. I did feel some vibrations and numbness, but thats as far as I could get.

When I woke up in the morning, I was surprised to have actually remembered at least one dream ( It was very vague, but I definitely remembered something ). I don't often remember dreams, so I quickly got up and wrote it down. Hopefully, as my "Dream Recall" get's better it will be easier

Give yourself a few days at least for your first time, geez. It's not like Japanese ,where you can learn 6000000 words in a cpl weeks and pass JLPT1 in a day (unless 'life' happens). ^_^ Maybe try some melatonin pills?

Ha, I know I'm quite impatient

I would class taking drugs as cheating though

Dreaming sucks (for me). I rarely have good dreams that leave me with a great feeling when I get up. Most of the time they just feel exhausting. AFAIK, from reading on various spirituality and some insights.. I concur with the Buddhist view. Dreaming means you are conscious but not lucid. Hence you can remember the dream (conscious) but without lucidity, you keep on reacting to the content.

But to be precise, you don't react to the content as much as the content is just made up by imagination, in response to very subtle sensations inthe body to which you react in the first place. Hence the images are non sense and while you can analyze dreams to some extents, its pretty pointless imho. Get to the source of these with Vipassana, eradicating all this BULL****¨and sleep dreamless sleep, fully rested, without reactions that make you feel exhausted in the morning. Or... be fully lucid. Yep that's the Dream Yoga route, good luck. I'm almost 100% certain at this point in my life that dreams are useless. They are just an indication of processes going on. They are not necessary contraty to what western psychology says, they're a symptom and not a cause.

Also if you can truly lucid dream on a regular basis, you have a window of opportunity for spiritual growth, you are VERY lucky. Learn about it and use it. I wish I could be lucid.

lol, I don't know if this counts but I think I've only had one xD and it wasn't on purpose. It was awesome tho & I forget the details but in my dream I just had the urge to go fly up to this spot to look at the city and I did lol, I can't explain it well but I always wanted to do it again xD. Almost every night I remember my dreams, but their not 'lucid' like that was, oh well :p

@ファブリス
Dreaming is a waste of time in Buddhism?  Hmmm... Yes and No.
Dream Yoga is not an area I have too much hands on experience with.  I have mainly stuck to basic Tantric practices designed for lazy people with negative habitual tendencies.  I can repeat what I have heard visiting teachers comment on the subject though. 
This is a claim that would be difficult to believe so I will just say it is what I have heard and not state it as fact:  Sleep is a waste of time and advanced practitioners like the Dalai Lama don't sleep at all.  They are said to get all the benefits of sleep by meditating all night.  I suppose it could be explained in the way people say being hypnotized accomplishes similar results to sleep.   Until one reaches that level of spiritual accomplishment, it is important to remain as lucid as possible during the sleep cycle.  It is said if one can always recognize when in a dream, the stages of death will be easier to recognize as well. 

Like Taylorsan said, alcohol and drugs make lucid dreaming difficult.  Over eating, especially meat will dull the mind as well.  Tibetan monks in retreat eat their last meal before 12:00 noon each day.

@bodhisamaya: I didn't say dreaming practice in Buddhism. I mentioned Dream Yoga. I read the "The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep" but I'm not hardcore enough to set my alarm every 2 hours   It is a very interesting practice, as it sheds some light on the state of consciousness at the moment (and possibly after..) of death.

Just from a personal experience, in my life, I don't see dreams as being useful. I don't feel the need to analyze them, because the time it takes to be good at that, might as well practice Vipassana instead and skip the need to analyze anything. As a self-understanding practice I am also doubtful about the value of dreams.. I've looked at mines.. I remember many of them, in my experience.. looking at my interactions with the outside world as projections of myself (what I buy, what I read, what moments I remembered from movies, the kind of people I hang out with, etc) far more revealing than trying to decipher the symbolism of dreams. And that isn't related to Buddhism either (don't think dream yoga is interested about the dream images, AFAIK it was about lucidity .. sort of night time vipassana).

TaylorSan wrote:

@bombpersons - The intention and effort to remember your dreams is perhaps the most important part of the process, and over time you will become much more skilled at it. The journal helps with this. If you keep a dream journal for long enough, you can pick out patterns that can also be used as cues that you are dreaming. For example, when I moved out here 3 years ago, I constantly dreamed about my friends from back home. By reminding my self that if I saw a friend "I am dreaming" it could initiate LD during a normal dream. For me the problem isn't remembering dreams, it's that I remember them so well (if I choose to) that it can take 30min to an hour plus to write it all in the journal (too much work for me...and I start getting hungry!). But if you can keep a journal for a while, it is a great tool.

Wow, 30 minutes!? Just being able to remember dreams in that amount of detail would be awesome Writing down your dreams is actually quite interesting, could make for some really wacky story

TaylorSan wrote:

Another thing that I find works, and the monks do, is to see all things as a dream. During the day you can say in your mind "I am dreaming, this is a dream." I also found that when I did a daily meditation practice it seemed to help immensely. Being patient and taking the time to become more aware about the nature of reality will have an impact to I think. Or making a list of 5 things a day to use as queues to do a reality state test. Example: every time you see a red car, every time you here the phone ring, every time you wash your hands, ect. You can switch it up everyday, and at the end of the day see if you remembered to do it. All this is training you to have increased opportunities to become lucid in the dream state. By doing some of these things I have been able to have 3-5 a week, but if I don't do it then they come very rarely (use it or loose it perhaps).

I just love the whole concept of the reality check thing. It's a pretty smart idea Could lead to some awkward situations though..